The Sands of Time
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: You never get back the time you lose. Kouji knows this, and this is why he can't understand how his brother has returned from the dead. /Post Frontier/


**A/N: **Been a while since I've written a loose oneshot, and this idea just randomly came to me. Enjoy, and I'll try to get back to my schedule asap. Majors year, you know.

…well, if you didn't, now you do :)

BTW, read note at end if you're confused after reading this...or just to learn my intentions.

* * *

**The Sands of Time**

The dead never come back to life. Kouji knows this, but he can't quite accept it. Maybe because he's been privy to more than his fair share of miracles, some might say. Still, one could hardly begrudge him for the chance to know his brother and see the two halves of his family reunited…unless their own families were not so fortunate, and therein envy clouded good will. Most didn't know of the life that had been saved by tears and another world upon that operating table, so they could not begrudge the second breath that many were not granted.

However, Kouji had witnessed, and enjoyed, such a miracle, for his brother, comatose and on the brink of death, had come back to life before his – their – very eyes.

And they'd enjoyed some time together. A good few years. Watching their mother become healthier. Their father and stepmother become less grey and more rosy…or that was how Kouichi always described it. Laughingly of course, but his words had a sense of underlining weight about them. It was a good thing however, as the new was better than the old, and Satomi especially was always happy to hear the compliment.

None of them thought about death during that time. There had been too much. Their maternal grandmother. The digital world (though that was a secret they shared between themselves and the four other friends that had been a part and born witness). Kouichi.

But then it snuck upon them again. Silent. Unsuspecting –

And sprung, taking from Kouji his twin in one fell swoop, leaving only a broken body and blood splattering onto his shirt, his face and his wide eyes.

After that, things spun into a shadow. He heard meaningless condolences but payed them no heed. He turned away from offered hands, thin and calloused and cold. He deafened his eyes to the lies that were spun around him, and he glared at the tenderness by which others approached, piercing his bubble of personal space.

Beyond that, things were the same. Similar anyway. Life went on, and he went through it a changed man. It wasn't like the time when he hadn't known about a brother, when he had been angry at the world and stubborn about needing company. And it went without saying it was nothing like the time he had spent with his brother.

It also wasn't like the time the five-some had spent together before gaining their sixth member, even if they didn't fall apart at the seams or stick even closer as most outsiders seemed to predict. They seemed incapable of understanding that each of them shared something special with another, and each of those things were, while interconnected, separate. That wasn't to say though that something did not hang over them, and that wasn't to say Kouji found himself distant from them and they from him, for they too partook in the lies his parents and other less meaningful people did, and he kept them at arms length.

That didn't change anything between them though. Just as it didn't change anything between him and his parents. Because one day he would get used to the idea, and stop clinging to something he knew would never be a reality.

And then maybe he would really move on with his life, instead of wallowing in regret, in the times that had been lost and never come back.

That was one thing he still listened to. That encouragement, to write his thoughts if he would not speak them to others – and he would not, because there was only one person he wanted to – could – share them with, and that person was no longer alive to accept them.

And so he wrote. Wrote about all the time they had spent together. The time that could only be remembered but never returned. The big things: the battles, the tearful reunions, the bursting heats…but also the small things: Kouichi snatching his jacket and making him run around the block before tripping over Hikaru with said jacket. Planning a surprise dinner for their parents. Meeting at a halfway point for their birthdays each year, always on the same platform at the same time without planning beforehand. Tickling him awake. The pillow fights that left them breathless with laughter.

The days of hoping for miracles were gone. The days of witnessing them even further.

And that was why he knew he was dreaming when he saw a familiar face before him. Except he couldn't fathom why his brother would look sad as well as happy in a dream. But it didn't change the warmth that snuck into his skin with the embrace, even if he cringed back and thought about how much worse things would be when he awoke.

The dream-Kouichi noticed that and pulled away a little. Another oddity. Dream-Kouichi should be going with the flow.

'What is it?' he asked softly, shakily. 'Are you…mad?'

'Mad?' Kouji asked hoarsely, laughing. Yet a third strangeness, for should his voice be free in a dream. 'You died and the worst part was that no-one was expecting it. Just "bang" and your brains are splattered on the pavement and your blood all over the place and –'

'Stop!'

Kouji stopped, only because his brother's voice sounded so unbearably horrified, so filled with pain, that even if he knew it was an illusion and not the real thing he could not go on.

The dream-Kouichi was covering his ears and shaking his head, trembling slightly. 'Stop!' he repeated. 'I'm not dead. I'm not.' He was trying to convince himself. In Kouji's ears, it sounded like he was trying to convince him.

Other voices pierced the bubble. Mumbling, unintelligible. Kouji ignored them.

'Will you stay?' he asked, against rationale.

A pause.

'Do you think I'm dead?'

'You are dead. I saw you die.'

'You see me now.'

'You can't come back from the dead.'

A pause, then a shaky: 'me, not him.'

Kouji blinked. Somehow, it seemed profound, but he could not place it. Despite it being a dream, he found himself wishing again it would become reality. Stay forever. But it wouldn't, and every second now hurt all the more.

'Me,' dream-Kouichi – except he hoped that somehow, against all rationale, it wasn't – said quietly. 'Not "him".'

And then Kouji understood. The heart that had spoken before the head.

'Too much blood,' Kouichi explained tiredly, embracing him loosely again, arms raising weakly off the white surface that wasn't cloud or anything supernatural but the simple white linen of a hospital room…

Or what looked exactly like a hospital room, because no-one came back from the dead.

'This is just a dream.' He hugged his brother's form, throwing caution aside and enjoying the moment. 'Just a dream.'

He was trying to convince himself. Or perhaps disprove it.

'I'll prove it isn't a dream.'

'How?'

'Because if it was a dream,' Kouichi breathed in his ear, 'we'd stay like this forever.'

'Then we won't?' Part of him felt he'd rather it be a dream.

'No, because time can never be returned. We both know that, and that is why it's so precious.'

And then he was pulled away – he, not his brother – and drowning in tears and tiredness and too bright colours.

* * *

**A/N:** Since I never explicitly say it, what happened was that Kouichi got shot through the head (no specific details required for this fic) and since in most cases, people die on scene with that sort of injury, Kouji thought he died and went into a state of shock which lead to a form of catatonia. However it is actually possible to survive (and come out still fully functional) gunshot wounds to the head, and so in this case Kouichi survives (although he's obviously traumatised in his own way – though not so obvious here since it's Kouji omnipresent) and by showing Kouji he's alive and not dead, brings Kouji out of his catatonia. Because they're so closely connected in a spiritual sense though, he did unconsciously know and that was why he didn't refer to the dream-Kouichi (or the real Kouichi he thought to be a dream) in the third person but rather addressed him as the real Kouichi, saying "you're dead" instead of "he's dead and you're not him".

Or you could say that it was a dream and Kouji woke up, but that wasn't my intention. Hence the "lies" comment: people telling Kouji that Kouichi was still alive.


End file.
